How Has Positive Thinking and Visualization Worked for You?

I have seen how positive thinking and having a positive attitude have greatly impacted my life. In one way it has been at work. As I interact with my co-workers, supervisors, and managers. It has allowed me to stay unbiased towards co-workers and to become good friends with all, amongst all the drama of gossip. I can be friends with all even though they do not all get along 100%. Also it has helped me to move around and learn new skills. I have been very successful in moving forward within my area of expertise because of this positive attitude. It has also helped me to pick up new responsibilities quickly because I don't focus on the negative, but I look to the positive and with that comes the ability to learn quickly. Positive thinking and attitude has also helped me to get through tough times that I come across. Often I have had friends comment about my ability to stay happy when I am doing hard things. I will find the joy in whatever I am doing and it helps to change my attitude. As I focus on the positive and leave the negative behind, I without a doubt feel more fulfilled. This principle also works with the friends that I have gained. As I focus more about the good and positive things about a person and less on their weaknesses and shortcomings, our friendship is strengthened. Lets face it we all have weaknesses and shortcomings, so we all deserve a little slack.

Positive thinking and visualization has gotten me through the last year of school. I am getting my degree in elementary education. There have been times I wondered why I thought I was good enough to be a teacher. As I visualize myself in front of a group of students, I know that I will be a great teacher. Positive thinking chases the doubts away and encourages me to continue on my path.

The meditation experience gave me more realization than I expected. For the first time in my life, I realized that I was a spirit and that love, peace and happiness and powers were natural attributes of the soul. In the absence of these qualities, we develop sorrow and disease. I developed a more easy and open nature. Accepting everyone as they are, was the greatest relief and all the fragile relationships become ones of love and respect. I would be constantly cheerful recognizing that everything that was happening had its significance.

Hi derek, Positive Thinking works for me over the years. Though I'm being anxious and at times let myself dwell on some problems, still, I still find courage to see the silver lining amidst the storm. Though I am aware that positive thinking is not the solution to everything, I still believe that having a positive attitude can help preserve our joy. I think I lack visualization. Although I believe in the theory. I have seen "The Secret" that Visualization is the key to gets you motivated everyday to reach your goal. I remembered the experience of a man who had a picture of a house pinned in his cork board. After some years he transferred to his new house that he himself built. Amazingly, he found out that his house is actually the one on the picture he had few years back! Since we are living in this critical times had to deal with, there is all the more reason for me to adapt visualization. Companies here and there shut down. I am still fortunate that the company where I work isn't calling it quits-yet. But I am open to some options to make end meets. I recently joined a multi-level marketing business as a side-line. Along with that, I am reviving my passion in music aw we had our ouwn recording company before. I don't want to say that I'm out of focus. I know I can juggle these roles eventually with no problems at all. But like I said, I lack visualization. There are impending obstacles in each options. There might be some disconnect - without visualization. Hope you can help. Thank you, doctor!

Thinking positive is much better.I mean its the best way of thinking.It makes me feel good and it can make me feel better.Because if I would think negative things,I believe that I'm going to attract negative people,negative situation and negative vibrations that could worsen my day.

Positive thinking has been the best thing to happen to me. I mean i can't really explain how grateful i am that i could understand the message. All my life i read books about great men, wise words, philosophy but didn't really understand what i was reading. But now i do and it's like everyday is a new revelation for me. Am just living my dream.

Yes, it has worked for me. Though not all the time, I can attest that it does make a great effect and I have seen its advantages. It does make life better, that is why, I want to improve how I do this things to benefit more.

I once used visualisation and positive affirmations to conquer my fear of public speaking. I would imagine myself giving a perfect talk, I imagine the audience loving everything I said and giving me a rapturous applause. I imagined myself feeling relaxed, confident and positive about the entire event. I repeated phrases like 'I am an excellent public speaker'. I went on to give a brilliant talk and everyone came up to me afterwards to say how much they enjoyed it. Since that first talk I have spoken in public over 50 times and went on to do motivational speaking. So yes, positive thinking and visualisation have definitely worked for me.

Thanks for bringing up an interesting and worthy discussion. I did learn meditation from a Hindu monstery in India, 20 years before when I was at my teen ages. The monks taught me the power of dreams and visualization and how to use them to achieve the goals. I found it very useful for my personal achievements whatever it may be. Born and brought up in the midst of obstacles and troubles, I am pretty much sure that I could not have reached to the present state of life without the visualization techniques I learned from the Hindu monastery. Now, I use visualization very effectively to overcome negative circumstances and unfavorable conditions while dealing officially to win over customer confidence and thereby bringing more orders to the firm I work. One of my childhood dream was to visit many countries. It came true through my job or the powerful inner forces the dreams generated in subconscious mind drove me to grab such a job! Wonderful though the actions of dreams, it is true. Visualization worked in my life and it works well now too. Thanks Derek for valuable inputs.

Hi derek! I wish that I could say that positive thinking was something that was easy to do! All my life I have been a person that leans toward the negative way of thinking. I have been working on trying very hard to change this. I am in therapy and have been for about 2 years. I have gotten a bit better at it, but it does take alot of time and reinforcement on a daily basis for me to continue to make myself lean more towards the positive ways of thinking. I think it will always be a struggle that will require a concious effort, but I am willing to continue to try to change!

I think you can recognise people who think positively and are able to visualise, because good things happen to them. Of course, everyone has bad times but the difference is how react to them and get over them. When I lived in south London, I had pipe dream about living in a house in the country, but I couldn't afford to move. After I was made redundant and couldn't get another job I set up a business working from home, which meant I didn't have to stay in London. Then the council made a compulsory purchase order on my home so it could be demolished and make way for new developments. Both the redundancy and losing my home could be seen as bad events. But they resulted in my dream coming true. Twelve years ago I moved to my house in the country. Now I'd like to sell it to live near the sea and I'm visualising myself walking the seashore every day.

Derek_a I'm not trying to change the subject here, but I thought if you're not already familiar with it, that I could introduce you to another type of therapy that would be complimentary to your work. It's called "Mindfulness" and it's based on Zen meditation but is very different from what you're practicing (from what I can see from your website.) It was pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD. He is the founding Executive Director for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He developed a very successful stress reduction program that over the last 20 plus years been adopted and adapted successfully by many other therapists and researchers. He has written many excellent books but a great one to start with that I think you would enjoy is "Full Catastrophe Living. Using the Wisdom of Our Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness." If you type his name into the search field at Amazon.com it will bring up his books. You can "look inside" Full Catastrophe Living as well as several others to get a taste of what it's about. Vizualization, the power of positive thinking, positive attitude are great tools. But I'm sure in your practice you must have come across people who just "can't get there from here" wherever their here is. This would be particularly true with people who have suffered multiple episodes of major depression. An excellent reference there is "Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression" by Zindel V Segal, J. Mark G. Williams and John Teasdale. The clinical studies on mindfullness meditation whether for physical or psychological maladies are impressive. Incorporating mindfullness mediation into your practice may help you with those people you encounter that have "barriers." Just a thought.

My wife is studying math in college,she once told me that sometime she feel so tired to finish an important classical math book just for the reason it's too hard to plunge into and read through, day after day, she was nearly desperate about the book which she is obliged to read, and won't even have a glance at it.Then I told her if she had tried to finish the first two chapters, "they're not as difficult as you had imaged",I encourged her,"just read it, bieleve that you can do it". Finally, she followed my advise and finished that book completely.After that,she is more confident than ever in studying math.

As to has it worked for me? I still cannot tell because I'm still in the process of applying it in my life. I just read the book The Secret and I'm excited to apply it in my life though sometimes I stumble and return to my old ways of being negative I guess the fact that I'm determined to be positive will keep me going.

Well, it ie very True that positive thinking and visualization is a Great tool to help many people. The problem is helping the people to be able to see that for themselves as well. Personally I came from a Very abusive childhood and so for me it was always hard to see the Good things in life. I had to learn to overcome these and learn to want to be a Go-getter and not accept things for what they are unless I was happy with them. It has not always been easy but I know with the help of a wonderful loving husband, friends, and god in my life things are what I am choosing to make them as well. So when people are having problems accepting things in their life, or thinking they will always be that way it is time for them to learn to find something that will help encourage them and motivate them to a better life for sure.

For many years in my life visualization and meditation was working for me. Shifting into positive thinking during the most difficult time helped me to stay calm and to expect the best. Hard to explain in any example, because I don't want to talk about those examples. All I can say, it was working for me.

I find that when I put my mind to it, I can be very positive and then positive things happen to me. If I visualize my success, then I am successful. This really does work but takes thought and effort. But it is worth it!

I've always had trouble clearing my mind enough to feel that I was truly meditating. I find visualitation to be a bit of a challenge too. I do find some relief with simple breathing. It does help me to calm down when I am feeling stressed or anxious.